Here’s an SEO win that I never thought I’d experience. For a particular Gmail search term, we now outrank Google, on Google.

One of my articles about a Gmail bounce code outranks Google’s own page on that same bounce code.

If you’ve sent any sizable email marketing campaigns from your Gmail account, you’ve likely encountered the dreaded 69585 bounce. It looks like this:

The code “69585” is unique to Gmail and is not a standard SMTP code. A while back I wrote a detailed explanation of what this bounce means and how to handle it. And now, if you Google “69585” or some derivative of that search phrase, look what happens:

Amazing! The GMass article is #1, and the official Google article is #3, with a support forum article sneaking its way into the #2 spot. If there was ever any suspicion as to whether Google favored itself, you can let that suspicion go.

Now, about Facebook listening to us through our phones and targeting ads to us that way…

Ajay Goel

Ajay is the founder of GMass and has been developing email sending software for 20 years.